What's a Girl to Read?

I am an avid reader. Always have been. My first recollection is one of horror, comfortably spent on our couch with pots of tea, spending an entire weekend as a pre-teen discovering The Diary of Anne Frank. My world changed that weekend.

I average about 3 fiction novels per month, that's 36 novels a year, alongside other sundry diversions. For guidance, I scour lists - for nominees, finalists and winners, and keep a journal of those books who's author, place in time or geography, subject matter and plot line appeal to me. From the Governor General Awards to the IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award, the Booker to the Nobel, the PEN/Faulkner to the Commonwealth Writer's Prize - all these juried by readers more knowledgeable than I.

Of all these testaments though, the Pulitzer attracts me most, my Oscar of reading. Perhaps because of its history - initiated as an award for journalism, letters, drama and music - or perhaps because of its founder - a rags to riches story where literacy for the masses mattered. Awarded since its inception in 1917, the Pulitzer seems to me to embody the art of writing.

Some winners I've read, others I've passed over, but I've always toyed with making my way through THE LIST. I've been spurred on by finding John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, 1961, not a Pulitzer book but a Pulitzer writer. It's title seemed to aptly describe how the cold has affected me this January! I am thoroughly enjoying the quality, particularly this tidbit: "To be alive at all is to have scars."

So in the interests of literary fulfillment, and to stave off the prospect of reading bad writing, I intend to make my way through the list of Pulitzer Prize Winning Novels. There just may be a writing opportunity here.